Organic Chemistry

Dr William Tucker – his passion for chemistry was inspired by his high school teacher, Gary Osborn. He left Maine to pursue Chemistry at Middlebury College, and after graduating in 2010 he decided to pursue a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he worked in the laboratory of Dr Sandro Mecozzi, where he developed semifluorinated triphilic surfactants for hydrophobic drug delivery. After earning his PhD in 2015, he took a fellowship at Boston University as a Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow. There he co-taught organic chemistry while working in the laboratory of Dr John Caradonna. In the Caradonna laboratory, he worked on developing a surface-immobilized iron-oxidation catalyst for the oxidation of C–H bonds using dioxygen from the air as the terminal oxidant. Throughout all of this work, his passion has always been for teaching and working with students both in and out of the classroom. He has been lucky for the past six years to work at Concord Academy, where his students have, through their questions, pushed him to think deeper and more critically about chemistry. Their curiosity inspires him, and their inquisitiveness inspired his writing.